Our View - Pandemic will continue while vaccinations lag

It’s astounding.

Some people seem to have the attitude that the COVID-19 pandemic is over.

It is not.

In response to a story published last Friday in Havre Daily News about Hill County Commission approving the county health department making new hires to help with an anticipated surge in COVID-19 in the fall, Facebook posts went up with comments questioning why a surge would occur and hinting that the concerns are fake.

While the federal government said earlier this year that due to the effectiveness of vaccinations, restrictions could be relaxed for vaccinated people, like their no longer needing to wear a mask and being able to gather in larger groups of vaccinated people, that doesn’t mean the danger is over.

It pretty much is for vaccinated people.

People who have been vaccinated can still get COVID-19 — breakthrough cases — but it is rare, and having serious symptoms and needing to be hospitalized or being in danger of dying is even more rare.

In a White House press briefing Thursday, Jeffrey Zents, White House COVID-19 response coordinator, said 97 percent of hospitalizations and deaths in the U.S. are in unvaccinated people.

Estimates are that more than 99 percent of deaths in recent months were of unvaccinated people.

But that doesn’t help people who aren’t vaccinated. Until enough people are vaccinated to essentially stop the spread of the virus, people will become ill, people will have to be hospitalized and people will die.

That will mostly be in unvaccinated people, but the spread can still occur in vaccinated people too — no vaccine is perfect. And while the impacts generally are less severe, it still has impacts. That has been shown at Northern Montana Care Center where new cases in staff members and residents shut down visitation at the center for weeks.

And the problem is the spread of the disease. As long as a large pool of people are unvaccinated, the virus will continue to spread. That exposes everyone, vaccinated and not, to the virus. While vaccinated people are likely to have milder — or no — symptoms, they can have serious affects.

And the unvaccinated do not have that protection.

Futhermore, while evidence shows that catching and recovering from COVID-19 provides some resistance, it is temporary, likely about a half a year or so.

That means people who had the illness — whether they knew it or not — last fall and early this year are likely losing their resistance as the Delta strain moves into the region.

While the term has been used far too often since the 2000 movie came out, right now parts of the country are entering a perfect storm to create a new surge.

The variant of the virus now causing most of the disease in the U.S., the Delta variant — which has been confirmed in this part of Montana — is much more contagious. Experts estimate it is spreading twice as fast as the version of the virus that was causing cases last summer and fall, and about half-again faster than the version that was causing most of the illnesses earlier this year.

And when K-12 school children and college students get back to school — basically the groups with the lowest vaccination rates — that will give the virus an even better chance to spread.

While young people are less likely to get severe symptoms — though they can and evidence shows that the Delta variant may be likely to cause more severe symptoms in younger people — they still can spread it to people who are likely to have severe, serious complications.

And the surge may not be waiting for fall. Agencies report that with high temperatures and high levels of smoke in the air, more people are gathering in large groups indoors — many without masks. That increases the chance of spread.

And nationwide, that is happening now. The White House briefing Thursday reported that the number of new cases increased 53 percent from the prior seven-day average, the number of hospitalizations increased 32 percent and the number of deaths increased 19 percent.

The surge is here, and it is starting to show in Montana as well, including in this part of north-central Montana.

While a massive surge has not hit here, new cases are trickling in and are only likely to continue to increase.

People have questions and concerns about the virus, and that is understandable. But rather than avoiding a potentially life-saving vaccination, they should find out about it.

And not through social media. Massive amounts of misinformation and disinformation is flooding the internet listing problems and concerns with COVID-19 vaccines. To borrow a phrase, they all are FAKE NEWS!

If people want to ask about the vaccine, they should talk to their health care provider, their pharmacist, the staff at the local health department, people who have been vaccinated.

And they can research it themselves — part of the problem is people not trusting information from the government, but they can go online and research the vaccines at locations like Mayo Clinic, Rochester Clinic, Johns Hopkins University medical school, Harvard University medical school, Stanford University medical school, and so on.

Until enough people are vaccinated, the virus will continue to spread, will continue to mutate, will continue to strain medical systems already stressed from the past 18 months, and will continue to kill people.

The way to end the pandemic is to get vaccinated.